camera-zoom

For the slow push that tells the audience to lean in. The realisation crossing a face. The detail the whole scene was actually about.

Open the editor Download .cinerune project

camera-zoom sample frame rendered from the bundled demo project — A real frame exported from the bundled `demo.cinerune` — camera-zoom over Cinerune’s code-assembly plate.

What it’s for

The push-in is one of the oldest emotional tools in cinema and it still works because the audience feels it before they notice it. camera-zoom scales the canvas from zoomStart to zoomEnd across the whole segment, driving toward a focal point you place anywhere in the frame. It isn’t a cut and it isn’t a pan — it’s the room slowly closing in, or opening up, while nothing else appears to move.

A long, almost-imperceptible creep is dawning understanding. A fast snap is a punch line, a jump scare, a reveal. Reach for this when: a moment needs to gain weight without a single edit inside it. Set focusX and focusY on an eye, a hand, a single glyph, and the whole frame recomposes around it as you travel. Reverse the values for the pull-back that ends a scene by abandoning it.

The curve is where the feeling lives. Linear is mechanical, surveillance-cold. Ease is a human camera operator. Step is the snap-zoom of grindhouse and kung-fu. Pulse breathes in and back out — a held breath, a heartbeat under the shot.

Where it lives in the app

Effects tray, group Camera. Add it to a layer and it animates over the segment’s duration. Gate it with a mask layer when you want only part of the composition to travel while a foreground element stays locked in place.

Parameters

Key	Range	Default	Effect
`zoomStart`	100–400%	100	Scale at segment start
`zoomEnd`	100–400%	150	Scale at segment end
`focusX`	0–100%	50	Point the zoom pushes toward, X
`focusY`	0–100%	50	Point the zoom pushes toward, Y
`curve`	Linear / Ease / Step / Pulse	Linear	Easing of the zoom over time

Pairs well with

twirl — push in while the vortex tightens and the shot stops being a zoom and becomes a fall into the frame.
phosphor — the slow travel leaves an afterglow trail behind it, turning the move into a long, deliberate streak of light.
code-rain-mask — push into the rain and the wall of falling code opens into a tunnel you’re dropping down.
text-glitch — snap-zoom on a Step curve into a glitching headline and the reveal lands like a physical hit.

Demo project

The downloadable demo.cinerune is this single effect applied to Cinerune’s bundled code-assembly plate — an amber procedural portrait — with a focal point set so the push has somewhere to go. Drop it into the editor (File → Open from disk…) to tweak parameters live. The frame shown above is exported from the same project.